from Anathema
Volume 6 Issue 1 (PDF for reading 8.5×11)
Volume 6 Issue 1 (PDF for printing 11×17)
In this issue:
from It’s Going Down
By Ivanna Berrios and Jason Koslowski
The 2019-2020 academic year is in full swing. And that means it’s time to think seriously about how we’ll build up radical campus struggles this year.
The following is Part 4 of the Campus Power Project, a series of interviews and writings about building radical, bottom-up class power on and across college campuses. For Part 1, see this; for Part 2, see this; for Part 3, see this.
In this interview, I spoke with Ivanna Berrios, a sophomore as well as an organizer with the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia
SLAP is an organization that aims to build student-worker power “for the transformation of our community and material conditions to create a better reality” at Penn.
Ivanna explores key issues like:
Since this interview during the spring semester last academic year SLAP has continued to develop, with changes in leadership and a focus on researching the working and learning conditions on campus. But the piece offers a snapshot of that ongoing development and SLAP’s efforts to develop student-worker power on campus.
JK: The Student Labor Action Project, or SLAP, has a longer history at Penn. Where did this most recent revival come from? What issue sparked it?
IB: SLAP has been officially on Penn’s campus since 1999. And they’ve done a lot of really great things in the past. They helped the dining hall workers gain a union—that’d be Teamsters 929—and also really involved in the campaign calling for Penn to pay PILOT [payment in lieu of taxes]].
In the past couple of years, it was mainly spearheaded by upperclassman, so when those upperclassmen graduated, SLAP membership kind of atrophied. It never really disbanded officially, it just had different waves of resurgence.
And the most recent wave that I’ve been involved in really started a couple of months ago in February, because the director of Penn Dining stopped permitting the celebration of Black History Month. This was in response to controversy at U Chicago and other campuses, where the celebrations were considered stereotypical. That was their claimed reasons for not allowing the campus workers to celebrate, even though the workers themselves said that they did want to do things for Black History Month.
One of our core members of SLAP, Michelle, is very very close friends with some of the dining hall workers. She was hearing their grievances, so we organized a direct action on campus just to show solidarity to say that we saw how Penn Dining was disrespecting the wishes of the dining hall workers.
That was back in February, but that wasn’t officially SLAP. We did a rally on campus where the dining hall workers spoke about how Black History Month is important to them, and how they were upset that Penn wasn’t allowing them to celebrate it or acknowledge it. And that basically kick-started a conversation about how Penn doesn’t listen to the dining hall workers in general, about their disrespect in the workplace. We started learning more about subcontracted labor. Penn subcontracts through Bon Appetit for certain dining halls, and the Bon Appetit workers are not technically Penn employees. And those workers are underpaid. They’re disrespected. They don’t get health benefits and education benefits. And then we connected to Villanova USAS, United Students Against Sweatshops. They really helped us a lot in providing a blueprint for how to restart an organization. We had organizing workshops and we did flyering and outreach.
So the most recent resurgence of SLAP had was catalyzed by the Black History Month event, and then it was Villanova USAS that fanned the flames, and we became an independent collective of students who were trying to continue SLAP’s legacy of working in tandem with the workers.
JK: What do you see as SLAP’s basic goals, both short-term and long-term?
IB: This semester we’ve been focusing on relationship-building, direct actions, and education. A lot of students on campus don’t realize that [campus] workers are being exploited to the extent that they are. So it’s been a lot of flyering, a lot of getting direct quotes and numbers from the dining hall workers. That’s our plan for now for the summer, research and building a base of people who support us.
Next semester [in fall 2019], we’re hoping to launch a direct campaign of antagonizing the administration, to get Penn to apply pressure to Bon Appetit. Because Bon Appetit is headquartered in California, so it’s really hard to apply pressure directly. Among our long term goals is to end all subcontracted labor on campus. It’s not just Bon Appetit, Bon Appetit is just what we focused on. But there are other subcontracted workers, and they’re also facing similar issues: they don’t receive the same benefits that direct Penn employees do. And we also talked about eventually having a living wage campaign so that every worker on campus would have a living wage, including grad students, including cleaning services. A long term goal is definitely to branch out into all types of workers on campus.
JK: Sometimes it seems as though there’s a tendency for campus struggles to focus mostly, or only, on direct actions like sit-ins. But SLAP is taking a more careful and long-term approach. Why focus on the slower base-building instead of focusing mostly on flashier tactics like a sit-in?
IB: Because we were working in tandem with the workers. We always want to consider what they want and what they feel comfortable with and the timeline they foresee. Right now, if we were to escalate without having a base, and just go out and have our small group of people who really believe in the cause, then there really would be a chance of backlash on the workers.
And it’s because our goals are so long term, so big. Eventually we want to end all subcontracted labor. We’re trying to see how we can build to that, and not just assume we can get that off the bat. Because it is a little unrealistic to think that we could just show up to the president’s office and demand that they end subcontracted labor.
I remember talking to a former slap member, Devon. She said, “Don’t launch a campaign unless you know you’ll have a good probability of winning.” That really stuck with me.
JK: So do you think it’s important to organize mostly around one particular campaign on a campus?
IB: Well, a problem that has faced SLAP in the past is that it has always been very it’s been very specifically campaign-oriented like other campus groups. It’s been its strength in that it always has a forward-thinking vision and there’s always the next thing to move on to. But it also means that once a campaign is over, regardless of success, the group will lose its audience after the campaign, because that was what was driving the whole group.
So we’re trying to make sure that that doesn’t happen to us, by having campaign after campaign rather than just one long enduring campaign. We want to make sure that it’s a succession, so that people don’t lose the group once the first campaign ends like they have in the past.
JK: The SLAP revival came through a member’s connection to the dining hall workers. How did your comrade make that connection? It can be tough on a campus to connect students and campus staff, since they’re (intentionally, it seems) kept so isolated from each other.
IB: Actually, the relationship was very organic. This member’s name is Michelle and she is a senior right now. So she’s had a lot of time to get to know the dining hall workers. And she’s also very outgoing and very friendly. She just happened to frequent one of the dining halls that subcontracted workers—Hillel—a good amount. And then through that she befriended the dining hall workers. And it’s funny enough, a lot of students don’t know a lot about the conditions of the workers, though a lot of students do form those organic relationships, just because, especially as freshmen, they see the dining workers every day, and they ask “Hi, how are you?” I wouldn’t say the majority 04:04 of students do that, because a lot of students at Penn can be very elitist and dehumanizing, and just see them as invisible sources of labor that can feed them. But there are definitely another group of people.
What differentiated Michelle was that she is very politically radical. Um, and I would say most of Core is. And so through those organic conversations— “Hi, how was your day”—it would come up: “Oh, this is happening.” One of the dining hall workers’ son was shot by police. He’s OK now, he had to go through a lot of physical therapy. But it was a really large financial strain on the family, and Michelle started a Go Fund Me to raise money, not necessarily from an organizing standpoint.
Something SLAP has really been trying to work on is building those relationships, so that we don’t have just one point person who’s friends with the dining hall workers while the rest of us don’t really know them. So we’ve been pairing up core members with dining hall workers, having them text them, reminding them about events to come out to, reminding them about meetings. We had a pot luck recently which some of the dining hall workers came to. It wasn’t even a structured meeting, we just all brought food and hung out. We’re just trying to build up those relationships.
Actually, though, that dining hall worker had been involved with SLAP for a long time. He’s a big leader among the dining hall workers at Hillel. And so he goes to all our meetings, or most of our meetings and he knows former SLAP members, and he’s familiar with Teamsters 929, and so just being friends with him really opened the door for us.
JK: I know this was an organic, almost accidental connection with the dining hall workers. But I also see a method coming out of this connection: finding ways to help break break down the walls of separation between students and campus workers, in more informal ways (everyday conversation, potlucks) and more formal ways (shared meetings). And then helping develop those relationships in more political directions.
IB: Yeah, that was really important for us. There’s a power imbalance between the students and the workers, and we didn’t want it to say, “We are the Student Labor Action Project, we have come to save you!” and have the workers say, “Who the fuck are you?” So we really tried to focus on building those relationships,
It is a friendship, but it’s also a politicized friendship. Because we really needed them to trust us for them to tell us the details of what was happening in their working conditions. I don’t think we could’ve done that without that organic process. I think it was founded upon just seeing the humanity and not necessarily seeing them as political subjects that we have to radicalize. That I think can sometimes be a perspective that some organizers and leftists take, and it comes from a good place, but it can be dehumanizing.
We first built those relationships with the dining hall worker, who like I said is a natural leader, and with a shop steward, and they tell the other workers. So there’s also that other element, where they trust us because they trust their fellow workers and those workers trust us. Because we can’t get to every worker, realistically. But we can get to the leaders in the workplaces who other co-workers trust.
JK: One of the major tactics that admins use against campus organizers is to pit different kinds of campus workers against each other: students against campus staff, staff with more benefits against staff with less benefits, and so on. Can you say how SLAP is trying to bridge gaps between those kinds of workers?
IB: Yeah, they’ve even been trying to pit students against students. We were recently in a meeting with Pam, the director of dining hall operations at Penn, as well as one person from the united minority students council, one person from Lambda, which is the umbrella LGBTQ group, one person from the umbrella African American students’ group, and one person from the Latina coalition. The meeting was in regards to the Black History Month event. We spoke to the people from the other student groups before the meeting, luckily. And we were able to see that most of them were on our side.
Pam didn’t want to talk about labor, she wanted to talk about diversity, and how they could be more culturally sensitive in the future. And every time SLAP would bring up the general disrespect of the admin towards the workers, she would say, “Oh, I think you need to stop derailing the meeting. Let’s see what [the other student representatives] think.” And they were like, “We support them!” Basically, the admins are trying to pit our group, the radical wing, against the more moderate, “reasonable” student body representatives, and it didn’t work, luckily. Because we had spoken to them and had them on our side first. They try to pit everybody against everybody, in any possible way, just to make sure we’re not talking to each other and not antagonizing them.
JK: That highlights how crucial it is for organizers to be reaching out and connecting to different kinds of student groups before confronting the bosses, so that admins can’t weaponize the idea of “diversity” against campus workers.
IB: The administration will use it as a weapon against grievances in general. Because after the meeting, then, they can say, “Oh, we met with students, we got their insight,” even if students didn’t necessarily walk away from the meeting feeling listened to or felt like we made any progress. And that’s definitely been a trend in the past. Someone actually brought that up in the meeting. Someone from the Lambda Alliance brought that up as a concern, saying “I just want to make sure you [admins] don’t release a statement saying that you met with us and listened to our concerns. Because I don’t feel like we’re being listened to.”
JK: What’s been the most effective tactic for building up SLAP so far, for getting more people in?
IB: I think the most successful has been our worker/student meetings, where um the workers come to meetings and we talk about their conditions and talk about what they want changed. And I think those have been the most successful in getting people invested. Afterwards we try to follow up with people, especially new people after the meetings. For the most part, those meetings have been the ones where people say, “I didn’t realize the extent of the exploitation, and hearing it directly from the workers was really, it really changed things for me, and I really want to get involved.” We’re not trying to slip into a purely emotional plea. It’s more that, when you see the anger of the workers and the frustrations of the workers, and you see them face to face, and you ask them questions, and you learn more personally, it makes you feel a lot more connected to the struggle, not just seeing it on paper. I think that has been the most successful at broadening our base.
JK: Can you say a word about the problem of student retention? One of the things I’ve run into organizing on campuses is that students go away for the summer, and some of the most experienced people graduate each year. What are ways to deal with this issue?
IB: That’s the biggest pitfalls to organizing. It’s cyclical. And it’s just so hard to keep people. What we’ve been trying to do is make a lot of spreadsheets to keep information on people. I mean that sounds creepy, but we’re really trying to make sure we don’t lose people. So we’ve been keeping track of who’s going to stay over the summer, we’re focusing on them. we’ve been keeping track of freshmen and sophomores, and we’ve been focusing on them for the one on ones and the follow up texts.
And we also try to build connections among the students themselves, because a lot of times, a lot of groups on campus can feel really pre-professional or depersonalized or can feel you’re only in it to add to your resume. So we had a potluck just yesterday where we all just hang out. And we try to just hang out and be friends and keep ourselves accountable to each other in that way. Especially core [members]. We weren’t even friends before but now we’re all tight. We would almost force it at the beginning: we’d be like, “OK, we have to build community, let’s hang out.” So we’ve just been trying to make sure that people feel invested because there are hundreds of student groups you could join and people are always juggling them.
JK: And I would think that because of this issue of retention, it’s especially important to build long-lasting relationships with campus staff workers who live in Philly, since they’re going to be longer term than a four year student, and they are around in the summers, too.
IB: Yeah. That dining hall worker I mentioned has been an important and a really great resource. And like he’s been a great resource because he was involved with SLAP earlier and then when all the momentum from SLAP graduated, he was still there. And so when this new resurgence of SLAP happened, he was there to help us out, using his past experience of working with the students.
JK: Another issue for campus organizers is funding. Groups face a dilemma. They can be officially recognized, and so get funding from the college—but that comes with faculty oversight and can blunt a struggle’s more radical edge. Or they can refuse to be recognized, but give up college funding, which could have helped a group grow and develop. How has SLAP navigated the problem of funding?
IB: We’re acknolwdged by the university—-but we’re different from other student groups, in that we don’t get funding from the university. So we don’t necessarily have faculty advisers.
We don’t want to be tied up with that type of bureaucracy. But at the same time we do indirectly receive money, just because some groups really support our message. They’ll get funding and give to us, kind of secretly. They’ll get funding to buy food for an “event” they’re having, but the event they’re having is to have us. So we’re not necessarily “clean” from university money but we are trying to avoid those those complications.
from Mainstream Media
So a group of people armed with Proud Boys swag walk into a West Philly bar.
Among the string of events that happened next: a boycott, a meltdown in online review sections, an interview on conservative talk radio, a projectile through a window, a complaint about Antifa, and a karaoke master who says he’ll never return.
It’s been a long couple of weeks for the Millcreek Tavern.
The West Philadelphia dive bar has been under fire and called a haven for hate by both longtime patrons and people who have never set foot in the place since Nov. 15. That’s when a group maybe affiliated with the Proud Boys, a far-right organization designated as a hate group, showed up for the weekly karaoke night and left their branded materials — including a mouse pad and fliers — lying around.
It wasn’t the first time the Millcreek Tavern and its owner, Jack Gillespie, have made headlines. In 2017, the bar was in the news for apparently booking a metal band known for its anti-Semitic lyrics. Once folks caught wind of the concert, they flooded the bar with phone calls and the show was canceled — Gillespie says it was a big misunderstanding.
He took a similar tack this time around, posting on Millcreek’s Facebook page three days after the incident that he had no idea who the Proud Boys were when there were concerns they were inside his bar. Then he wrote that the group wasn’t actually the Proud Boys at all, but from Turning Point USA, a conservative student organization.
Philadelphia Proud Boys’ only response to The Inquirer was to say “Lol boycotting?” via email and point out that someone threw something through the Millcreek window. TPUSA’s local chapter didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Gillespie, for his part, said he acted in good faith and doesn’t know what he’d do if the Proud Boys came back. He said that he might ask them to drink somewhere else, but also that he’s “not going to discriminate” and believes in their First Amendment rights.
The Proud Boys are self-identified “Western chauvinists” and designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “general hate” group. Its male-only members have espoused anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric.
Some of the group’s members have been aligned with extremists and appeared at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., that promoted white supremacy and neo-Nazism and resulted in the death of Heather Heyer. Two of the group’s members were convicted earlier this year of attempted gang assault for taking part in a violent brawl in New York, while others reportedly made a threatening late-night visit to the Philadelphia home of a critic.
Gillespie said the bar got a phone call on Nov. 15 from someone claiming they wanted to bring in a group of Republicans to partake in karaoke. No problem, Gillespie said. He was in the bar starting at about 9:30 p.m. and saw two groups, each of about 10 people, that he didn’t recognize. They were “well-behaved,” he said, and drank, ate, and did karaoke. He noticed there was “a Proud Boy file” and “a Proud Boy logo” on one of his tables, but said he hadn’t heard of the group and thought nothing of it.
Gillespie said he went to bed around 1 a.m. and the night was without incident.
Others at the Millcreek that night remember it differently, including Vashti Bandy, a writer and liberal activist who lives in South Philly. She’s faithfully sung karaoke at Millcreek every Friday for at least six years. In 2017, Bandy gave Gillespie the benefit of the doubt and publicly defended Millcreek during the anti-Semitic-metal-band debacle.
Her loyalty was for the same reasons that made this whole incident sort of unexpected: The bar attracts a crowd that’s diverse in every way imaginable. It’s a stone’s throw from the yoga studios and vegan snack shops on Baltimore Avenue. And this is West Philly we’re talking about — Gillespie, on a radio show, called it a “bastion of liberalism,” and few would argue.
Bandy was in the bar with a group of friends and regulars when they spotted the literature. Among the materials on one table: a folder with fliers and a mouse pad that said “Philadelphia Proud Boys.” On an adjacent table were signs and stickers with TPUSA literature, including stickers and buttons with slogans like “Socialism Sucks” and “Yay for 2a,” a reference to the Second Amendment.
Then Bandy saw a group of about 10 white men clad in golf shirts and khaki pants. They stuck out like sore thumbs. The normal Friday-night crowd is “a mixed group,” Bandy said, “but they’re not generally the khaki-pants-golf type.”
Bandy, 40, said she then got on stage and, into the microphone while Gillespie was nearby, dedicated Lily Allen’s “F— You” to “the Proud Boys” and said something to the effect of: “We know who you are. Get out of the bar.” The group went upstairs.
Meanwhile, regular patrons alerted bar employees that there was a possible hate group in the house, and conferred with Stanley Gravitt, a karaoke administrator who’s been running the Friday-night show at Millcreek for six or seven years. Gravitt, who said he was fearful partly because he is black, said he felt unsafe and uncomfortable all night long.
And that night was only the beginning.
Gravitt, 39, said he won’t be returning. Ditto for some of the Friday-night regulars. Bandy said she can’t support a business “that at best cannot be bothered to have basic respect for regular clientele to do a minimum level of vetting to make sure you’re not bringing in hate groups.”
Online mobs on both sides flooded Millcreek’s Facebook and Yelp pages with reviews, leading to arguments in the comments. Yelp temporarily disabled posts to Millcreek’s page due to “unusual activity.”
And a few days after the incident, Gillespie woke to find someone had thrown something heavy and metal through the front window of the bar. Police confirmed a report of vandalism was filed on Nov. 20.
Without proof, Gillespie has blamed Antifa, a loosely defined, leftist, antifascist organization that’s a frequent presence at protests in Philadelphia. Antifa has before engaged in physical confrontations with people it believes are fascists or Nazis. (SPLC says it doesn’t consider Antifa a hate group because it doesn’t “promote hatred based on race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity.”)
from Anathema
Volume 5 Issue 7 (PDF for reading 8.5×11)
Volume 5 Issue 7 (PDF for printing 11×17)
In this issue:
Submission
-book tour-
Emerging from a study group on strategy, Deceiving the Sky is a collectively produced book, resource and study guide. While the word “strategy” can evoke hierarchy, centralization and a satellite’s-eye view of the world, we feel it is necessary to strengthen our own strategic reflexes. We believe that strategy can be a lens, an orientation to the world that understands existence as a shifting array of forces, capacities and intentions. Deceiving the Sky is an attempt to build a new language that we can share, to develop our collective capacity for strategic thinking, to become more powerful together.
Dec. 4th at 7:30pm
Wooden Shoe Books
704 South St
From AMW English
The following is a selection from a transcript of a podcast interview with Black and queer abolitionist writer Stevie Wilson. Stevie is being held captive by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and was recently released from solitary confinement. He speaks about the importance of abolitionist study, as a space of common encounter that undermines the hold that the carceral state has on our lives, both inside and outside prison walls.
Yeah, I got transferred from Smithfield and I’m now at SCI Fayette. Um, you know, sometimes when you’re an ally behind the walls… Sometimes means more than being an ally, being an accomplice actually. And, uh, it was a situation where a prisoner was attacked by two guards and, I kinda had an accident that we did online and the administrators found out about the accident. I was behind it and so they, uh, they moved to get me out of the way and kind of bury me in the hole. But thankfully because of the support that I had outside, it applied pressure on them and they got me out of the hole, but they transferred me to another prison. So now I’m — I was three and a half hours with my family. Now I’m six hours with my family, about 40 minutes South of Pittsburgh.
Definitely. It’s something that’s to be expected though. When you do this type of work behind the walls, it’s not about being an ally. You will become an accomplice and so whatever that person is doing they’re going to try do to you also. So I knew at one point they were trying to bury the young man in the hole because when they attack us, they try to flip it and say, you know, we attacked them. So they’ll bury them from six to nine months in the hole. And because we were successful in getting them out of the hole until a safer prison, you know, I became a target after that he was gone. And so, uh, I was able to go bother them and I did once again because of the people like Critical Resistance. I was able to come out of the hole, I did about two months battling with these people. We were able to come out of the hole and um, and, and be placed at Fayette now. So… but the work doesn’t stop. The work doesn’t stop you know?
Yeah. I think, I think…well, I’m gonna tell you something: That prison was a little different where many of the groups that we were doing were actually taking the place of programs that they had actually discontinued, right? So there was a lack of programming there. So we were putting together the transformative justice group and it was something that they liked, they gave us space for it. They gave us space for it you know, um, and what’s happening in Pennsylvania is because of the, the rehabilitation programs have been gutted. The educational programs have been gutted. There has been a space opened up for prisoners to initiate groups, right? Um, and so we did it at Smithfield, you know, and I’m here at Fayette, it’s kind of the same thing now, you know, where people don’t have anything to do when the prison wants them to do something, you know. So once again, there is an opening for us here.
Well, the first one we called 9-9-71, obviously in reference to Attica and it was a general abolitionist study group. We started with something like “Are Prisons Obsolete?” By Angela Davis and what we do is we do a chapter reading and then we would come back and we have discussion questions. We focus a lot on definitions because this is the first time many people were hearing about abolition. You know, when you think of a world without prisons, they thought we were crazy. You know, the first thing out of their mouths, “what are we going to do with the murderers and rapists and things like that?” And so we had to really talk about basic definitions and things like safety and community and things like that. So that was the largest group because it was more generalized. We also had a group called Circle Up, which is a transformative justice group, most of those men there were under the age of 25, about 23 young men. And they were doing a program called Circle Up and it was talking about transformative justice. How we apply, inside the prison in and our families and our communities. SAS was a Queer Aboltiionist group… That group we started because it was sometimes difficult to talk about those types of issues in 9-9-71. So we had a group that went through “Captive Genders” and queer injustice and works like this from an abolitionist perspective. And then we also had book clubs… that has been taken over by Haymarket books now. So here at Fayette we are going to be doing it and Haymarket books will be providing the books for us. So we’re happy to have that program still continue.
Submission
Over the last decade we have been made witness to the naked brutality of power. In the four corners of the earth domination has displayed its capacity to wreck devastation without hesitation. Those who were just holding on to their last lines of dignity have been dragged down in the mud. Those who rose up to regain their dignity and fight for freedom, have been smothered and massacred. Not content with the daily administration of oppression, it seemed as if the rulers were aiming for a decisive victory by escalating their repressive violence.
They were mistaken. Instead of resignation, we are witnessing the resilience of those who want to live against all odds. The ruins that power left behind, as monuments to its scorched earth tactics and as a warning for the future, are in our hands the first stones of a new life. The cynical calculations of politicians, who are willing to sacrifice whole generations to uphold their political reign or their economical dogmas, have been erased by the unforeseen. An invisible line has been crossed; beyond this line humiliation is no longer tolerated. Where this line is drawn, and why there, is to remain unknown till it has been crossed. That there is a line is a certainty that the dominant forces wished to ignore.
Many take a passive attitude due to the unpredictable character of that moment, when the social order is not only confronted by a few rebels but by a full-on rebellion. But for anarchists the knowledge of this resilience of people should warm our hearts and nourish our determination that any instance of rebellion has the potential of overflowing.
In order to survive we all adapt to a certain extent to the daily lot of humiliations that are part of authoritarian societies. But surviving isn’t enough and another line crossed can be one too many. These lines cannot be imposed by ideology or some kind of universal truth. And in a sense they are random, but that doesn’t make them meaningless. On the contrary, they are the starting point of an existence that matters; one that rebels against its subjugation.
PDFs on thelocalkids.noblogs.org
from Radical Education Department
By Jason Koslowski
Introduction to the Campus Power Project
This is Part 3 of the Campus Power Project: an ongoing series of interviews, articles, and podcasts. (For Part 1 of the Campus Power Project, click here. For Part 2, click here)
Campus struggles in the US have surged recently: at Johns Hopkins, at Yale, at Evergreen State, at the University of Pennsylvania, and well beyond.
This series aims to help take stock of our campus struggles for radical, bottom-up, antiauthoritarian power on college campuses, so that we can make those struggles more powerful in the coming years. The focus is on concrete organizing lessons we can learn from comrades in revolt.
The media series is only one half of the Campus Power Project. The other half aims to help build up—across Philadelphia and beyond—lines of communication and coordination among radical campus struggles.
If you are working with leftist campus organizations and want to get involved, please reach out to us!
College campuses are systems of capitalist domination: of workers, students and surrounding communities. But campus revolts have been on the rise in recent years. In the US, for instance, as the university system comes to rely more and more on cheap, precarious labor, teacher and graduate student union struggles have been on the rise.
As public funds for colleges are slashed, tuitions increase, and campuses become key sites for fascist recruitment among disillusioned youth, many students are pushing back in occupations, walk-outs, demonstrations and other actions.
In struggles for power on-campus, the sit-in is one of the most often-used tools — although the results are mixed. Sit-ins can be powerful weapons helping shift the balance of university power for the dominated class. But they can also become sinkholes of time and energy leading to reprisals from administrators, burn-out and infighting.
Now that a new school year has begun, what lessons can we learn from recent sit-ins about how and when to use them well? And what other, and more radical, possibilities can sit-ins point us towards? To answer these questions, I look at a few recent sit-ins that happened on very different kinds of campuses. Allowing for differences, we can mine those struggles for organizing lessons.
The 35-day Hopkins sit-in that began on April 3, 2019 exploded out of a longer struggle against the administration’s push for an armed, private police force on campus. Hopkins justifies that push for the sake of both public safety and keeping up with its “urban university peers” — relying on a method that has already had deadly results across the country. In the process the school strengthens its links to Baltimore’s violently racist police force.
For about a year beforehand, the fight at Hopkins focused on contacting the JHU admins for more information and asking for a reversal of the decision. The sit-in was organized by grad and undergrad groups like Students Against Private Police and Hopkins Coalition Against ICE, with the anti-ICE coalition spearheading campus tour disruptions to affect Hopkins’ bottom line. But organizers drew on a wider base than just students, connecting, for instance, with nurses in the process of unionizing at Johns Hopkins Hospital and coordinating closely with the “the West Wednesdays” weekly demos against police violence, which began to protest the police murder of Tyrone West in Baltimore.
Originally, organizers planned a single-day occupation of the lobby of the administration building that houses the university president’s office. Once the action began, though, the occupiers decided to escalate to an indefinite occupation until administrators met their demands: disband the private police force being prepared for Hopkins; end the medical school’s training of ICE agents; and push for justice for Tyrone West.
For most of its duration the occupation was symbolic. The building functioned much as it had before: admininstrators, staff and students could freely enter and leave. Throughout, a key focus of the struggle was an aggressive media campaign against Hopkins, with organizers winning high visibility for their struggle in national media outlets like the Washington Post and the Chronicle of Higher Education. The administration, however, refused to budge on the demands. And so on May 8, the sit-in escalated. Occupiers locked the doors and shut down all access to non-protesters.
The administration’s response was swift. That night, 100 armed police forcibly evicted the handful of remaning occupiers. Protesters primarily turned to social media to attack the university while continuing support for West Wednesdays.
Despite the highly publicized eviction, the results of the sit-in have been mixed. Admins only agreed to meet after the eviction — at the end of July, when many of the students had left campus. At the meeting they agreed only to a vague campus event about the private police force and ignored calls to end ICE collaboration and disband the private police force. The meeting ended with admins announcing investigations of students and possible retaliation against occupiers.
Yet at the start of the fall term administrators folded to one key demand: the medical school announced it would not renew its contract with ICE. While the struggle is now on a weaker footing after the eviction and with impending reprisals, there is a possibility of escalation by protesters this academic year — especially if solidarity with the nurses’ unionizing efforts develops into a more coordinated and active struggle.
from It’s Going Down
In this episode we were lucky enough to speak with two people on the growth of Black, New Afrikan, and anti-colonial anarchist formations. One of the people joining us in the discussion is a part of the Philadelphia chapter of the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement and the other person is from the Afrofuturist Abolitionists of the Americas.
Our discussion covers a lot of ground, but we speak heavily on a workshop that the comrades are presenting across the so-called US on black anarchism, the recent theoretical Anarkata statement, as well as everything from anti-police and prison abolition organizing, to the impact of the Ferguson rebellion, survival programs, and much more.
One of the themes that came up several times, is finding “little a” anarchism or simply anarchy, in the day to day self-organization and revolt of everyday people in the face of the American plantation and finding ways to build solidarity and action with these organic forms. Our guests also stress the need for the anarchist movement to stop looking just to European groups, history, and movements for inspiration, and instead draw from the rich history of resistance to settler colonialism, slavery, and industrial capitalism in the so-called Americans, in order to better inform our organizing.
Music: Sima Lee and Black Star
For Info: Set up a workshop by getting in touch with Philly RAM here or via email (ramphilly@protonmail.com), read Anarkata statement, Black Rose reader on Black Anarchism here, and Burning Down the American Plantation from the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement here.
Reading Recommendations:
As Black As Resistance by William C. Anderson and Zoé Samudzi
The Progressive Plantation by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin
Anarchism and the Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin
A Soldier’s Story: Revolutionary Writings by a New Afrikan Anarchist by Kuwasi Balagoon
Burn Down the American Plantation by the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement
Black Fighting Formations by Russell Maroon Shoatz
The Dragon and the Hydra by Russell Maroon Shoatz
from Anathema
Volume 5 Issue 6 (PDF for reading 8.5×11)
Volume 5 Issue 6 (PDF for printing 11×17)
In this issue:
from Anarchists Worldwide
After Ori Feibush’s house was vandalized in late July, conversations sparked again in Philly about whether the attack constituted violence whether it was justified. Feibush – the widely-hated founder of OCF Realty, who for many years has been shamelessly spearheading the gentrification of Point Breeze – has few defenders, which presents the opportunity for one of the better dialogues communicating why targeted property destruction might be happening and why it might be effective.
The conversation about this latest OCF vandalism – in which most people commenting online reacted positively to the news – was heartening. It suggested that something has qualitatively changed in how people are understanding property destruction and why it makes sense. In the long battle over this topic in this country, which from my vantage point has been raging since Occupy Wall Street, perhaps we have finally gained some ground.
But if we’re gaining ground in one battle, it’s probably because we’re quietly losing in another, more important one. If we’re finally winning the conversation about property destruction, maybe it’s partly because it is no longer relevant.
Before the Trump era – especially during the Clinton and Bush years, when the world seemed to have reached a global consensus that capitalism and the nation state were awesome – property destruction was especially dangerous to power in that it disturbed the social peace, serving as a reminder that things were not in fact awesome at all. As Trump took hold of the state, grassroots white supremacists also gained power, and anti-authoritarian struggles became focused on countering their presence in the streets. This has made discussions of physical violence relevant again for the first time in decades. Yet give the opportunities this has presented for us to put forth various ideas about violence, it seems like we’ve accomplished disappointingly little regarding this important topic.
Instead, we’ve arguably lost some ground by ceding the conversation to “self-defense” justifications of physical violence and by discussing violence almost exclusively with regard to people whom internet leftists like to call “Actual Nazis.” It is not a radical discussion to think punching a nazi is okay, and it is not a victory that after much internet discussion we’ve gotten many people to take up this non-radical position. While conversations about why and how we’re fighting white supremacists are important, the exclusive focus on discussing violence against grassroots racists is conveniently derailing us from talking about what kind of violence might be necessary and appropriate against the people who are actually in power.
Today power is in a state of crisis that I have not seen in my lifetime. Global capitalism is in search of a lifeline it may not find; the climate is already spiraling out of human control, with genocidal consequences. We have a president who is unprecedentedly unpopular with at least half of the population, which in turn reflects the increasing polarization of the country between left and right as capitalism and the state increasingly fail us all. As things become more extreme, this means we and other people who lean anti-authoritarian will be up against racist militias, who are often military-trained and organized to respond to crisis scenarios. Right now it’s hard to imagine our side winning such fights, and we need to talk about how to do more to move towards not being immediately crushed by white supremacists in a crisis or collapse scenario.
And what about the kind of violence, death, and destruction that will likely happen in the course of liberation? It seems like many people genuinely think that radical electoral politics will gradually move us closer to revolutionary transformation. Others – maybe some of the same people – believe that mass social movements will develop to such an extent that physical violence will be negligible in the revolution they will eventually produce. These outcomes seem highly unlikely, if only because the state seems willing to do almost anything rather than lose power. But those of us who want to get rid of the state – and all kinds of power over others – rarely discuss, whether ethically or practically, how we imagine dealing with the kind of violence that will be necessary for an insurrection or revolution to spread or succeed.
It is especially rare that this conversation leaves the realm of ethics and enters into practicalities. Anarchist attempts to take up physical violence against power have a long history, including in this country – from assassinating presidents to shooting up corporate bosses. What can we learn from the strategies and tactics of the past? And what about other people who get caught up in the crossfire of insurrectionary violence? Avoiding such conversations in order to appeal to liberals and leftists isn’t doing us any favors – it just adds to the impression that many of us do not really want to deal with the problems involved with enacting violence.
As anti-authoritarians, we often get stuck in dialogues with other that keep us stuck in limited, reactive mode – for example, all the conversations in which we are asked to defend our vast and unrealistic critiques of the system. How can we be more intentional about what we want to be talking about and what ideas do we want to be spreading? Let’s not be afraid to challenge the questions themselves and change the terms of the conversation – which like everything else are convenient for power.
Let’s also consider what we’re capable of and what we can each contribute to stopping this system of power – or at least parts of it – before its genocidal effects make these hypothetical questions about violence posed to anarchists completely irrelevant. Some of us may focus on attack; some of us might focus on developing skills and infrastructure that will keep each other safer and healthier as attack succeeds and/or the system we’re fighting deteriorates. Let’s point our skills and passion towards liberation.
Responses to any of the questions or ideas brought up in this opinion piece are welcome! Write to anathemaphl(at)riseup(dot)net
(From Anathema Volume IV Issue V, September 2019)
Note from Anarchists Worldwide: The photo accompanying this article was randomly sourced from the internet and is used for illustrative purposes only – it did not accompany the original version of this article.
from Philly IWW
We, the Philadelphia General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World, condemn the eventual closing of Hahnemann Hospital in Center City, Philadelphia, as well as the safety and environmental negligence that led to the explosion at the Energy Solutions Refinery in South Philadelphia on June 21st.
The assets of Hahnemann Hospital have been gradually stripped away by a private equity firm, which did not seek any improvements or reinvestments in the hospital. Patients in the United States continue to deal with private insurance companies that do not cover the total costs of their clients’ health care. Real estate developer Joel Freedman bought the hospital and has plans to sell the building for the development of high-cost real estate. Hahnemann Hospital provides care for many low-income and unhoused patients; these patients are to be moved to other area hospitals, which may burden and disrupt Philadelphia’s healthcare networks and the working class people they serve. Hahnemann employs doctors, nurses, cleaning staff, record keepers, security guards and other workers to maintain the hospital and provide care for patients; these workers will lose their jobs and livelihoods in the event of a closure. We support the efforts of unions such as the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, or PASNAP, along with other unions and supporters in taking action against the closing of the hospital. The Philadelphia GMB, however, is wary of politicians that promise to stop the closure, or who use the cause to strengthen their campaigns. This is only one of many hospital closures in urban and rural areas in the United States for similar reasons.
The explosion at the Energy Solutions refinery in Southwest Philadelphia was partially caused by the company’s neglect of basic safety and environmental standards. The company should compensate both the community members affected by the explosion and the hazardous chemicals that were released, and the workers who will be made jobless due to the destruction of the plant. The Philadelphia IWW GMB calls for the company to liquidate itself to pay for these damages, and rejects calls for the plant to return to the hazardous fossil fuel industry. The workers in these industries, including those who formerly worked for the Energy Solutions Refinery, should be retrained to work in less hazardous industries.
Both of these closures represent a glaring failure and the inability of the capitalist system to meet the needs of the people and workers. The price of healthcare necessities has risen unchecked and basic safety precautions in a potentially deadly plant are phased out as too costly, all while CEOs and the stock market make record profits. These are not isolated incidents: this is the logical outcome of a system that demands continuous growth. This system must be stopped and the workers themselves, not politicians or NGOs, are the only ones with the power to do so. We must organize now for the abolition of wage slavery and the preservation of what is left of our environment.
from Anathema
Volume 5 Issue 5 (PDF for reading 8.5×11)
Volume 5 Issue 5 (PDF for printing 11×17)
In this issue:
from It’s Going Down
In April, the union of teachers and staff at the Community College of Philadelphia won an important victory: a contract fighting off many of the years-long attacks from the administration.
Administrators had been pushing aggressively for higher workloads for teachers while at the same time attacking healthcare for all employees at the college. The Faculty and Staff Federation (AFT Local 2026) mobilized and pushed back, ultimately preparing for a strike. In response, the administration threatened to cut health insurance for all employees -an attack on the most vulnerable workers at the college and a transparent attempt to divide and conquer.
But the impending strike brought admins back to the table, and a new contract was signed. In the compromise that followed, the union won a workload reduction and the administration backed off a number of threatened healthcare cost increases, as well as agreeing to a pay increase for staff. But the union victory was partial. For example, Yusefa Smith notes in the union’s press release:
We didn’t win on class-size. I’m still teaching 36 students per class … At Montco and Bucks [other Philadelphia area community colleges], it’s 27-28 students per class. But we did win some workload reductions, which is a victory for our students. But we will keep fighting on class size.
The following is an interview with a union activist member of the full-time faculty at CCP. They wished to remain anonymous. We asked what lessons other campus workers can learn from the union struggle at CCP.
Can you summarize some of the important background regarding the recent CCP union struggle?
Sure thing. Before we get started, though, I should say upfront that I’m not an official union (or college) spokesperson, and the views I’m expressing here are solely my own.
Our union represents about 1,200 workers at Community College of Philadelphia and is composed of three bargaining units: the full-time faculty unit, the part-time and visiting lecturer faculty unit, and the classified employees unit, which includes many of the non-faculty workers at the college.
The collective bargaining agreement at CCP has historically been a pretty good one thanks to the work of our union going back to the 1970s. In recent years, the upper administration of the college and the board of trustees have sought to chip away at it. The most recent contract negotiations, which began around 2016, represented a continuation of that trend.
The college administration began negotiations by proposing that we accept several deeply concessionary proposals which would have negatively affected educational quality and made it more difficult to attract and retain a diverse faculty, among other things. The administration’s demands were wide-ranging and would have affected workload, joint governance, pay, and benefits. The admin basically wanted us to give up significant past victories in all those areas and more. The admin’s opening proposals would have meant some of the lowest paid workers at the college would have remained woefully underpaid. They also would have seriously undermined shared governance at the college, to the detriment of our students and everyone who works at the college. We were able to fend off many of these proposed changes but unfortunately not all of them.
In the last few years, teacher strikes have been kicking off, with an important rank-and-file power making itself felt within them. How do you see faculty/staff struggles at colleges fitting into that bigger picture of teacher strikes? What can we learn? Why is it important to struggle for worker rights on campuses?
This is a great and complex question, and I’m not sure I know the full answer. But there are some things I see in common when I look at labor action by education workers, whether they are early childhood educators, K-12, or higher ed workers.
First, I think it’s important to recognize that “education workers” means more than just teachers. At CCP our union represents faculty members, but it also represents the non-faculty workers who help the college run. This is one of the things I like best about our union.
Second, I think the struggles of education workers are inextricably tied up with the struggles of our students. We want schools that are good places to work and to teach, and our students deserve schools that are good places to learn.
Third, I think victories for education unions are important for the economy as a whole. Each one helps shape the labor market we all work in, and the labor market our students work in or will work in.
On a related note, I think the struggle we’re seeing between education workers and those who would try to control us is related to the question of the purpose of our schools. Are our schools going to be places where students learn the bare minimum of the basic skills they need to serve corporations and governments? Or are our schools going to be places where students are able to really develop themselves as whole people, meaningfully reflect on history and the present, and begin to develop solutions to the problems that are important to them? If it’s the latter (and I think the future health of our society depends on it being the latter), that’s going to take resources, and I think, unfortunately, it’s fallen to education workers, students, and community allies to have to fight for those resources.
I think the root cause of a lot of the strikes and other discontent I’m seeing among education workers is the result of government underinvestment in public education as a result of neoliberal austerity and the related rise of the notion that “schools should be run like businesses.” This is particularly salient and pernicious in institutions that are supposed to serve historically underserved populations.
I think the response is for education workers, students, parents, and community members to demand full and fair funding of all of our systems of public education. I would like to see education workers’ unions at the forefront of that.
What strategies did you see the administration using against the workers/union in recent months/years? What were some of the more effective ways campus workers responded?
Even people who had been at the college for a long time said this was the most inflexible and unreasonable they’ve seen a CCP administration be in negotiations. The administration’s tactics ranged from the sort of typical corporate anti-union crap you’d expect, to the sometimes bizarrely petty, to the really despicable threat they made to cut off the health insurance of everyone who went on strike.
The threat against the health insurance of anyone who went on strike I found especially odious. The administration made it against people who, in some cases, were making less than $15 an hour and who qualify for public assistance for food. We have union members who are on chemotherapy or who have family members on chemotherapy. We have members with high-risk pregnancies. We have members whose children have disabilities that require ongoing treatment. For the administration to threaten to suspend these people’s health insurance in retaliation for striking I found to be really disgraceful. I’m not sure what the college administration’s plan is now to try to come back from that and credibly claim to be leaders of the college, other than in an authoritarian way.
Our union’s response to this threat was to help our members understand how they could remain insured through COBRA or by purchasing their own health insurance. But I think this also underscores the importance to future labor struggle of universal government-provided health insurance.
For the years these negotiations were going on the administration spent I can only imagine how much of the college’s money on an outside law firm to represent and advise them. They also did strange things like order our union posters taken down from college bulletin boards. While we couldn’t outspend the administration on lawyers, since, you know, we were spending our own dues money instead of taxpayer and student dollars, the union does have a negotiations and strike fund and a lawyer of our own. As far as the posters being taken down: Well, there are more of us than there are of them, so we just put them back up.
The administration did other things, too. My understanding is that there was an agreement to keep the exact content of negotiation sessions mostly private, but the administration seemed to not fully abide by that. They’d cherry pick what they thought were the best parts of their proposals and put them out in public and email them to all the students. They’d use this to try to further their narrative that the union was being unreasonable. I think a good response to this for next time would be to have open bargaining.
Another thing the administration tried to do was to drive wedges between our bargaining units. Like I mentioned, two of our bargaining units represent faculty members, while the third one represents non-faculty workers at the college. I think the administration tried to take advantage of this in several ways. One thing they did was focus very intensely on proposals they had for increased workload for faculty. Faculty fought back against this, and I think the administration then tried to say, or at least imply, to the non-faculty workers something along the lines of, “See, the faculty are holding up your contract by fighting us over workload.” I can’t speak for everyone, but I think this sort of “divide and rule” tactic was pretty transparent, and in the end we stuck together and signed three contracts together, as we traditionally have. I think maintaining and increasing solidarity, communication, and camaraderie between and within the three bargaining units is going to be important for our union going forward. I think an important part of that is going to be committing to making our union a more actively anti-racist union, as there are different racial demographics in the different bargaining units.
What worked best in your struggle? What do you think were the most effective strategies and tactics?
I think the foundation of the most successful elements of our campaign were organizing conversations. These are conversations where union members volunteer to talk to other union members about what they’re thinking and feeling and what they’d like to see happen with our union. I think these are important for so many reasons. They build trust and relationships, and they allow union leadership to understand what members want in an in-depth way and make decisions accordingly.
Another important part of our effort was making it clear how what we were fighting for would be beneficial for students and the larger community. The Bargaining for the Common Good Network does a great job of describing this method of campaigning, and we used a lot from their framework in organizing our own efforts.
We received some political support from some members of state and local government, but when it came down to it, it was our demonstrated willingness to strike if needed that caused real change at the bargaining table.
What role did students play in the strike? How crucial are students as a support system for education workers struggling on a college campus?
From my perspective, students played a huge role.
First, on a personal note, I was deeply touched by how supportive my students were when I told them we might go on strike. I was worried they might see a potential strike as a betrayal on the part of their teachers, but almost none of my students seemed to think about it that way. Obviously, we all wanted to avoid a strike if we could, but my students were really clear that they’d be in support of me and the union if it came to a strike. I can’t fully describe how much that meant to me, just on a personal level.
Secondly, the possibility of a strike meant there was a lot of discussion on campus about strikes and unions. Some of this was between union members and students. Some of it was students talking to other students. Some of this was in class. Some of it was outside of class. But, all in all, I’d say the possibility of a strike led to a greater awareness among the students about unions and their power and importance. I remember one of my students saying something in one of our class discussions like, “Wait, so you can just say ‘no’ to what your bosses want to do? We gotta get a union at my work.”
Some students became actively involved in support of our contract campaign, contacting local politicians, the college president, and the college board of trustees. Some showed up at our demonstrations. Some talked about running for student government and trying to address the same issues with the college that the union wants addressed regarding things like funding, resources for students, and class sizes. It was really inspiring and touching for me to see our students become aware and active around these issues like many of them did. I think this may have been one of the best aspects of the contract campaign for me.
What main lessons do you think other education workers struggling in Philly and beyond could learn from what’s been happening at CCP recently?
So much happened. I think I am still processing and learning from everything that happened. But right now, these are the things that stand out as lessons I learned:
The importance of ongoing one-on-one organizing conversations between members as an organizing strategy that builds solidarity, camaradiere, and communication.
The importance of using a Bargaining For The Common Good framework where the union makes clear how what the union is fighting for will benefit the greater community. In our case, this was things like fighting for full funding for the college, smaller class sizes, more resources for students, and a more diverse faculty at the college.
Start organizing and preparing to strike early. Like years early. Our current contract ends in three years, and we have already begun our campaign for the next one.
Don’t underestimate how much work it is. I didn’t formally count, but I am sure our contract campaign required literally thousands of work hours.
At least in our situation, the negotiating at the bargaining table seemed to be more about power than debate. It didn’t seem to really matter whether we had reason, logic, evidence, and well-crafted arguments for our proposals. It seemed to come down to whether we could demonstrate enough power to force the other side to have to change their position. As an academic observing negotiations at an academic institution, I found this particularly disappointing, but I guess here we are in late capitalism.
Political allies are nice, but it’s the threat of a strike that is the source of your power.
I hope this is all helpful information.
On October 17th 2017, 17 prisoners were indicted for allegedly partaking in the uprising that occurred at James T. Vaughn Correction Center in Smyrna Delaware on February 1, 2017. This miscellany of individuals would eventually be given the moniker “Vaughn 17.”
Contrary to our charge of “conspiracy,” prior to this case many of us had never interacted with one another before. As far as myself I only knew 3 of my co-defendants on a personal level. I believe this unfamiliarity exacerbated the tensions that arise while one is engaged in a struggle for life, freedom or truth. Ultimately our triumph hinged upon surmounting psychological barriers that were buttressed by our diverse array of ideologies, idiosyncrasies, experiences, maturity levels and ways of life. Out of all that, there still remained a sad but proven reality that weighed heavily on our minds. There’s 17 co-defendants — the odds are in favor of at least 4-6 opting to cooperate with authorities to secure some type of leniency for their cowardice. With that being the foremost concern, me and Jarreau “Ruk” Ayers approached individuals and recommended that they first consult with us, if they found themselves pondering thoughts of compromising. Being though the vast majority wasn’t privy to or knowledgeable of any specifics concerning the takeover, we would of provided them with details pertaining to our actions, so they wouldn’t concoct fabrications about anyone else. Figuratively speaking we’d accept being stabbed in the chest to present others from getting stabbed in the back. Only one person gave the proposal any consideration. More than anything he was frightened of the maliciousness of the deputy attorney generals, and felt vulnerable against the power they wield. Imagine going to sleep at night with 4 years remaining on your sentence, then morning comes and your greeted by 3 counts of murder, 3 counts of assault, 4 counts of kidnapping, 1 count of riot, 1 count of conspiracy. Internally a lot of my co-defendants were grappling with this abuse of discretion, but they never expressed any desire to seek a pseudo refuge in anticipation of the metaphorical slaughter that some thought was inevitable.
During these preliminary stages it definitely appeared as though the prosecutors had everything rigged to ensure our guilt. The department of corruption aided their accomplice. By keeping us sequestered in living quarters conducive to the deterioration of one’s mind. Some of our adversaries disguised themselves as court appointed lawyers. The system “tried” to box us in on every level. For the first 8 or 9 months the only discovery (evidence) that “some” of us received was co-defendant statements, DNA analyses, and other reports that were deemed paltry. Any material critical to our defense specifically, information alluding to why we were charged was held under a protective seal by a judge’s order. The cumulative effect of these hinderances (tactics) provoked one of my codefendants to contemplate “throwing in the towel,” somehow he rationalized that pleading guilty to something he had no involvement with was a viable solution towards evading the barrage of mental intrusions. Their schematic design became so overwhelming that it nearly infringed upon his sanity. To a degree, all of us were on the verge of psychological exhaustion. Instead of mentally collapsing, it caused us to start making conscious efforts to morally support each other. This was around the time my motion to go pro se (represent myself) was granted. I filed a subsequent motion stating that I be issued a laptop and be given all the discovery discs that the lawyers were entitled to. My request was granted with the stipulation that I adhere to the rules and regulations of the protective order. Which basically meant that I share nothing with my co-defendants. “Yeah Aight!” Once I started receiving the material “we” began analyzing it. Simply saying that we immersed ourselves within this case would be an understatement. I never witnessed a group of individuals move with such a synchronized mind. “Due diligence” is why truly empowered our collective. After sifting through the discovery, which amounted to 7 boxes of documents and about 45 discs. There was no physical evidence, no surveillance footage, or forensic evidence. It all came down to our 17 against 41 lying snakes.
The results: Me and Ruk was found guilty, for basically admitting to our levels of involvement. Deric Forney, Kevin Berry, Abednego Baynes, and Roman Shankaras were acquitted. John Bramble and Obadiah Miller had a hung jury on a few of the charges, but a retrial would not be pursued. Cory Smith, Luis Sierra (Abdul Haqq), Janiis Mathis, Robert Hernandez, Jonatan Rodriguez, Alejandro Rodriguez, Pedro Chairez and Lawrence Michaels all got their cases dismissed. R.I.P. to Kelly Gibbs who took a plea during jury deliberations of the first trial. He committed suicide the night the verdicts returned.
This narration of events was shared to provide a fundamental basis to delineate another nuance of “Vaughn 17.” Like I mentioned, we were essentially strangers comprised of different races, affiliations, motivations etc. Some of my co-defendants had real beefs on the streets. We are a microcosm of the prison population, which reflects society as a whole. I just want to put emphasis on how our discrepancies became inconsequential after the true enemy was identified. If the 17 of us along with our comrades and supporters could unify to deliver a blow that caused the political landscape in Delaware to implode imagine what 1,700 or 17,000 strong can accomplish….
The power is the people.
-BIM
